“Like a Rowling Stone”

“The stories we love best do live in us forever” J. K. Rowling

“We do not need magic to transform our world. We carry all the power we need inside ourselves already. We have the power to imagine better.” – J. K – Harvard University Commencement Address (5 June 2008)

Joanne Rowling (born 31 July 1965) is a British author notable for writing the Harry Potter series. The Potter books have gained worldwide attention, won multiple awards, and sold more than 400 million copies.

They have become the best-selling book series in history,and been the basis for a series of films which has become the highest-grossing film series in history. Rowling had overall approval on the scripts as well as maintaining creative control by serving as a producer on the final instalment.

The books chronicle the adventures of a wizard, Harry Potter, and his friends Ronald Weasley and Hermione Granger, all of whom are students at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The main story arc concerns Harry’s quest to overcome the Dark wizard Lord Voldemort, whose aims are to become immortal, conquer the wizarding world, subjugate non-magical people, and destroy all those who stand in his way, especially Harry Potter.

“I got the first Harry Potter book, funnily enough, on my 11th birthday. The same day when Harry first learned he was a wizard, and I finished the book on that same day, I couldn’t stop reading. I pretty much lived with Harry through my teen years as new books and movies came out. I’m 22 now and I still enjoy the books, I’ve read them numerous times and I’ll admit I died a little inside when I closed the last book for the first time. I didn’t want it to be over haha! Rowling is fantastic.” Lhune77

The Conception of Harry Potter

“I was travelling back to London on my own on a crowded train, and the idea for Harry Potter simply fell into my head. I had been writing almost continuously since the age of six but I had never been so excited about an idea before. To my immense frustration, I didn’t have a pen that worked, and I was too shy to ask anybody if I could borrow one… I did not have a functioning pen with me, but I do think that this was probably a good thing. I simply sat and thought, for four (delayed train) hours, while all the details bubbled up in my brain, and this scrawny, black-haired, bespectacled boy who didn’t know he was a wizard became more and more real to me. Perhaps, if I had slowed down the ideas to capture them on paper, I might have stifled some of them (although sometimes I do wonder, idly, how much of what I imagined on that journey I had forgotten by the time I actually got my hands on a pen). I began to write ‘Philosopher’s Stone’ that very evening, although those first few pages bear no resemblance to anything in the finished book” J. K

When she had reached her Clapham Junction flat, she began to write immediately.[In December of that year, Rowling’s mother died, after ten years suffering from multiple sclerosis.

“I was writing Harry Potter at the moment my mother died. I had never told her about Harry Potter.” Rowling said this death heavily affected her writing and that she introduced much more detail about Harry’s loss in the first book, because she knew about how it felt. J. K

“The Elephant House” – The café in Edinburgh in which Rowling wrote the first part of Harry Potter.

“I think most of us if you were asked to name a very evil regime would think of Nazi Germany. … I wanted Harry to leave our world and find exactly the same problems in the Wizarding world. So you have to the intent to impose a hierarchy, you have bigotry, and this notion of purity, which is a great fallacy, but it crops up all over the world. People like to think themselves superior and that if they can pride themselves on nothing else, they can pride themselves on perceived purity. … The Potter books in general are a prolonged argument for tolerance, a prolonged plea for an end to bigotry, and I think it’s one of the reasons that some people don’t like the books, but I think that it’s a very healthy message to pass on to younger people that you should question authority and you should not assume that the establishment or the press tells you all of the truth.” J. K – Harry Potter’s Bookshelf : The Great Books Behind the Hogwarts Adventures (2009) by John Granger

“Jessica Mitford has been my heroine since I was 14 years old, when I overheard my formidable great-aunt discussing how Mitford had run away at the age of 19 to fight with the Reds in the Spanish Civil War“, and claims what inspired her about Mitford was that she was “incurably and instinctively rebellious, brave, adventurous, funny and irreverent, she liked nothing better than a good fight, preferably against a pompous and hypocritical target.”

“The fame thing is interesting because I never wanted to be famous, and I never dreamt I would be famous. I imagined being a famous writer would be like being like Jane Austen” – J. K – interview with Jeremy Paxman, on Newsnight

“The stories we love best do live in us forever. So, whether you come back by page or by the big screen, Hogwarts will always be there to welcome you home” . J. K – Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 London Premiere (July 2011)